I saw my father fly tankers every day for the air force, too.

Because I lived in the same house with him and saw him get up early, put on his flight suit, drink his Coke, and go to work. Did I ever actually lay eyeballs on him manipulating the controls of a KC-135? No I did not. But I saw him fly for our military nevertheless.

So now that we’ve established Romney’s dad was literally with MLK, can we all also accept “saw” as a figure of speech that means “I knew my dad was doing this”?

And even if Romney’s father hadn’t actually marched physically with MLK, marching at the same time and for the same cause is good enough to fall under the same figure of speech. He would have “marched with MLK” kind of like the British armed forces “stand with us” in Iraq even if most of our guys never inhabit a tank with them.

For pete’s sake.

Update: Or not.

Then-governor George Romney did indeed march in Grosse Pointe, on Saturday, June 29, 1963, but Martin Luther King Jr. was not there; he was in New Brunswick, New Jersey, addressing the closing session of the annual New Jersey AFL-CIO labor institute at Rutgers University.

Those facts are indisputable, and quite frankly, the campaign must have known the women’s story would eventually be debunked — few people’s every daily movement has been as closely tracked and documented as King’s. As I write this, I am looking at an article from page E8 of the June 30, 1963 Chicago Tribune, which discusses both events (among other civil-rights actions of the previous day), clearly placing the two men hundreds of miles apart. I also have here the June 30, 1963 San Antonio News, which carries a photo and article about Romney at the Grosse Pointe march; and an AP story about King’s speech in New Jersey.

A King researcher editing his letters from that time has stated definitively that the two men never marched together; Michigan and Grosse Pointe historians have stated definitively that King was not at the 1963 Grosse Pointe march; Michigan civil-rights participants of the time have concurred; so have those who worked for George Romney at the time.

So the campaign gave the two “eyewitnesses” the contact information to tell their story to Politico after Romney already said he was saying “saw” in the figurative sense, as I described above. Both statements were figurative–that George Romney “marched with” MLK (because he marched at the same time for the same cause) and that Mitt Romney “saw it” (in the same sense that I saw my dad fly for the air force). Both of those figurative uses are perfectly acceptable, grammatically speaking. But the campaign directing the two “eyewitnesses” to Politico after Mitt had already gone all-out with the “figurative” explanation, again perfectly acceptable, is at the very least a huge political screwup and at the very most the promotion of a blatant lie.

Message to the Phoenix, though:

It is offensive because of people like Russell Peebles.

Peebles is an 88-year-old man, a former resident of Grosse Pointe for 48 years, who was present at both the Grosse Pointe march in 1963, and the MLK speech in Grosse point in 1968 — the event at which the Romney campaign initially insisted Romney and King marched together.

I tried to contact Peebles earlier this week, prior to writing the original article, but we missed each other back-and-forth. Peebles sent me an email today, attesting to the fact that George Romney was at the 1963 march, but not the 1968 speech; and that King was at the 1968 speech, but not the 1963 march.

Peebles, and many others like him, deserve to have the history of what they did told honestly. Changing that history by mistake — which is quite possibly how this began — is unfortunate. Changing that history intentionally — which is what the campaign is doing now — is offensive.

A lot of people have tried to make “offensive” the last word (heh) in damning adjectives. But it’s not. Untrue is still quite a bit worse. And for the Romney campaign to promote the story of the eyewitnesses if they already know it’s untrue, after Romney himself indicated that it’s untrue by his explanation of his use of figurative language, is dumb on the face of it and promulgating a lie on people they think are stupid at worst.

(H/t: Hot Air.)

“My favorite author is C.S. Lewis.” –Seven-year-old reacting to Huck’s pronouncement of Dr. Seuss as his favorite.

Story outline, Randal O’Toole (heh-heh, Toole) story, Oregonian, by Anna Griffin

I. Describe the guy. Lucky here; he looks as though he shops at Old West Undertakers. Hook him up with preachers, that turns people off–

Slap a Bible in his hand and O’Toole could easily pass for a frontier preacher. He has the look, if not the Good Book: a stern, tight-lipped expression, an impressive display of graying facial hair, a wardrobe that tends toward simple black suits and looping Western-style bow ties.

II. Contrast conservative opinion with that of the New York Times—

Click. Here’s a slide showing a big house on a lush, green yard. This is in Houston, a plump 2,300 square feet for $170,000.

Click. Here’s a skinny house in Portland, maybe 1,200 scrunched square feet on a sliver of a yard. Asking price: $260,000.

It’s like looking at a diet company’s before and after photos. The crowd — a room of like-minded libertarians and conservatives — quakes with laughter.

“You’d better hurry. They just dropped the price,” O’Toole says. “It’s got granite countertops and hardwood floors. Who cares if you barely have enough room to turn around in it?”

Times are flush in Portland. Planners and civic leaders from around the world come to see how we do it. The New York Times can’t stop writing about how great we have it, whether we’re sipping tea, buying big vacation homes or biking to work. Although the housing market has cooled, Portland hasn’t suffered the same steep decline as the rest of the country.

III. Make the point that it could be worse,—

Still, O’Toole sees hope. Even after Oregon voters approved the property rights limits of Measure 49, Portland isn’t a lost cause. No, we’re not Houston. But we’re also not San Francisco. At least, not yet.

Snap. Article writes itself.

***

Portland Metro’s current policies will lead to us being as bad off, in terms of what a housing dollar will buy, as San Francisco, as the reporter herself mentions, though she doesn’t make perfectly clear whether this is only one of O’Toole’s crazy positions or if she understands that fact herself. Nevertheless, the point is well made. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday, we will be just as crowded and just as house-poor as the Bay Area. And with any luck I will be out of here long before that happens. For a city that claims to care so much about the poor and working-class, it is nigh on impossible to get a decent house around here for working-class money–especially one that does not share walls with other families–and strict land-use policies are a big driving factor in that. But hey, win-win, right? You get to keep your farmers in perpetual farmity while keeping out lower income strata that might affect our safety rating. Win-win.

H/t: Daddyman.

I do love to read people who know how to use language with precision, unlike the yammering nannies at modern-day Sesame Street. I give you Fug Girl Jessica (don’t worry about deciphering the Mischa Barton photos, we’re here for the article):

As a huge fan of the seminal tune “I Love Trash,” — truly, it’s neck and neck with “Rubber Ducky” as the best Sesame Street song ever, in my opinion, with honorable mention going to “C Is For Cookie,” which I hear has been replaced by “Cookies Are A Sometimes Food,” which, I sorry, is bullshit, because cookies are an ALWAYS food, they’re just not a MASS QUANTITIES food. Why you gotta play me like this, Sesame Street?

That was only about strike 17 or 18 for Sesame Street, which I’m thankful The Bean never really got into. He watched Elmo’s World mostly for my sake, because I thought it was something babies his age did, and after a while began protesting loudly. I quit turning the show on at all the day it began promoting stealing as a legitimate way of getting people to give you things.

My niece, age almost 15 months, watches Elmo but with a certain amount of derision. When she hears his music or sees his image, she looks around for somebody to speak to and prounounces her review: “Monkey.”

SeeDub, all grumpled and jealous.

“Grumpled,” instead of the aural thud of the word “grumpy,” sounds less angry and more amenable to being smoothed over, like its parent word “rumpled.” Paging Babies SeeDub, #1 and #2, Daddy needs some kisses!

Confused yet?

A Jackson County Circuit judge ruled Friday that the Medford School District can forbid a teacher from carrying a concealed handgun on school grounds.

English teacher Shirley Katz, 44, argued state law allows her to carry a concealed handgun for protection.

[Judge] Arnold said the issue before him was whether a school district can prohibit employees from carrying weapons by writing an employee policy. State law does not allow local governments to write laws restricting guns, but because the district had not enacted a law, Arnold ruled the district prevailed.

The reasoning here seems to be that Oregon state law does not expressly guarantee the right to concealed carry by preventing local jurisdictions from passing laws against concealed carry. My question for the judge is what other possible purpose could such a law have, other than to prevent local jurisdictions from infringing upon a right guaranteed by the state?

This is a rock and a hard place for the school district, and as a former teacher and a mother, I’m not unsympathetic to that. On the one hand, would I prefer teachers to have guns in case bad guys with guns show up and open fire on students? Yes. On the other hand, the body of public school teachers is not immune to poisonous, insane, and criminal people within their ranks. Teachers are brought up with noticeable frequency on sexual abuse charges regarding their students, for example. All it would take is one instance of a gun-carrying teacher turning out to be a psychopath who opens fire, and the particular school that had hired that person would be completely finished. (Although I frankly doubt that schools, especially in this state, are given to placing any importance at all on the former scenario of armed teachers helping to prevent school shootings.)

But it should not be a difficult issue for the state law. Either make an exception for school districts under the law, or enforce the law–that the right to carry arms shall not be infringed. Here’s what the law actually says:

166.173 Authority of city or county to regulate possession of loaded firearms in public places. (1) A city or county may adopt ordinances to regulate, restrict or prohibit the possession of loaded firearms in public places as defined in ORS 161.015.

(2) Ordinances adopted under subsection (1) of this section do not apply to or affect:

(a) A law enforcement officer in the performance of official duty.

(b) A member of the military in the performance of official duty.

(c) A person licensed to carry a concealed handgun.

(d) A person authorized to possess a loaded firearm while in or on a public building or court facility under ORS 166.370. [1995 s.s. c.1 §4; 1999 c.782 §8]

A city or county may not adopt ordinances to infringe upon the rights of a person licensed to carry a concealed handgun. A school district is not a legislative body, but it is a governmental one, as has been tested numerous times in free speech cases. In addition, the law also says:

166.170 State preemption. (1) Except as expressly authorized by state statute, the authority to regulate in any matter whatsoever the sale, acquisition, transfer, ownership, possession, storage, transportation or use of firearms or any element relating to firearms and components thereof, including ammunition, is vested solely in the Legislative Assembly.

(2) Except as expressly authorized by state statute, no county, city or other municipal corporation or district may enact civil or criminal ordinances, including but not limited to zoning ordinances, to regulate, restrict or prohibit the sale, acquisition, transfer, ownership, possession, storage, transportation or use of firearms or any element relating to firearms and components thereof, including ammunition. Ordinances that are contrary to this subsection are void. [1995 s.s. c.1 §1]

Oregon school districts are called, well, districts. If they are going to issue directives that have the force of law on their campuses, then they are making law in effect and most assuredly usurping the power of the state legislature. In addition, their directive does not apply to parents or visitors–why? Because they know they could never make it stick on people over whom they don’t have direct employment power. The net effect is, give up your concealed carry right or find another job. And as I say, I’m not unsympathetic to this position–all things being equal, “around your young children” is not where you want guns as a matter of routine. But all things aren’t equal when it comes to school shootings. The teacher in this case wants the gun for her personal safety and not as a test case for teachers prepared to fight back against potential shooters, but the implications of the precedent will presumably be the same. I hope this is overturned on appeal.

Update: Survey of the two school resource officers at Citizens’ Academy says: Teachers carrying would deter would-be shooters.

Why are the Eagles selling their new album exclusively through Wal-Mart? Not that I mind, but it doesn’t seem to track with Henley’s annoying politics. Maybe those are only about speech, as in his and his fellow performers’, and not about his money, though.

Oh, and here’s a hint, Don: It ain’t “debate,” civil or otherwise, when people pay to hear you sing and you treat them to your views without them being able to “debate” back. See how that works?

“Given what my good friend Linda Ronstadt —” Henley started telling the crowd, but he was cut down as the audience erupted in boos, reports the Orange County Register. Henley responded: “Whoops — Orange County, we used to be able to have civil debate in this country. Not anymore.”

If concerts were supposed to be give-and-take, I’d have been on stage with both Billy Joel and James Taylor by now, politics be damned.

In S. Renee Mitchell’s Oregonian column a week ago, she strongly disapproved Mayor Bloomberg’s “Opportunity NYC” program, which will pay poor adults to do things like attend parent-teacher conferences and hold down full-time jobs and poor teenagers to pass their school certification tests. The bulk of her column is overflowing with unintended irony–she sees and remarks on the incentives and motives that keep some poor people poor, sometimes for generations, and objects strongly to fostering a “gimme” mentality, but reverts right back, like a rubber band relaxing back into place, to the major bugaboos of the liberal attitude toward the poor as victims of a corrupt “education, banking and government systems that stubbornly keep people under poverty’s thumb.”

We can’t throw money at the poor here and magically expect those whose lives are the hardest to more closely resemble those whose lives are the easiest. Giving cash incentives won’t automatically end high-interest loans, reduce their vulnerability to crime, or jolt them out of the depression that often comes with living life every day on the edge.

Tell it to LBJ. If money is the difference between the poor and middle class and wealthy, then how is it that throwing money at the poor won’t change that gap? Obviously, what Ms. Mitchell comes so close to here but never quite hits on it is that it isn’t just money–it’s working for that money, understanding that nobody will give you money if you don’t work for it, and spending the money on appropriate necessities and luxuries for yourself and your family. And by her own statement, then why shouldn’t welfare systems heavily involved in “throwing money” be abolished? Ms. Mitchell speaks of her children as “not entitled to be lazy” as long as they’re under her roof. There is no more effective incentive for adult citizens not to be lazy than to have to work to eat because nobody “throws” money at them, and arguably none that will work at all if that one doesn’t.

And Ms. Mitchell clearly knows this. After describing her own childhood poverty, she states:

Eventually, my parents educated themselves out of abject poverty, but I’ll never forget the experience of never having enough. You can’t buy the kind of inner fire that stems from trying to escape a cycle of constant lack.

Incentive. And yet with her very next sentence Ms. Mitchell demolishes the idea she was so blithely tripping toward in the previous:

Productivity and self-reliance increased my self-respect. But over the years, I’ve encountered some low-income parents who share those values and some who don’t.

So now earning your own way is a value that can either be espoused or discarded. Tell me, Ms. Mitchell, what is a societal solution to the problem of those who choose to discard it?

While in Orlando, I wrote about an innovative — and expensive — Walt Disney World pilot program to get rid of all of the excuses that multigenerational welfare mothers had about why they didn’t work. Disney offered decent-paying jobs, as well as classes on budgeting, parenting and goal-setting. The participants received free rides to and from work, free child care and a chance to save for retirement.

An excellent experiment in incentivizing. Take away the excuses of those people who may not even recognize them as excuses, and see what incentive comes out ahead:

After a few weeks, I revisited one of the mothers I had interviewed for my article. She told me that she had quit her Disney job — and the opportunity to give her four children a better life — because she missed watching her afternoon soaps.

Implicit in this pathetic and disgusting story is the certainty that whatever assistance this person was receiving from sources that did not require her to work was sufficient to allow her to 1) feed herself and her children some amount of food and 2) watch television, which apparently are all she wants out of life. How can there be anything appropriate to do for that person other than to give her the incentive to work that her current source of subsistence does not? While I doubt that Mayor Bloomberg’s program will do the trick, certainly the current welfare system doesn’t either.

Poverty starved that mother of her productivity, integrity and self-respect. A hustler at heart, she wanted the most money for the least amount of effort. So, a job opportunity wasn’t appreciated in her household, where children were considered as excuses not to work.

Exactly backwards. She didn’t become a hustler because she lost her self-respect to poverty. She is a lazy sort of hustler who found out how to get something for not much and decided her self-respect and poorer lives for her children were a reasonable price to pay for the opportunity to go through life lazy and idle. Whatever sort of subsistence she’s on, and I have to assume it’s welfare, possibly supplemented by things like church food pantries and assistance programs, it’s been enough to incentivize her hustler mentality to remain on top, as well as setting a bad example for her children that one hopes they will find enough education to counteract.

Sadly, I doubt there’s any amount of money this program could afford to pay that would make people already not inclined to hold down full-time jobs do otherwise. But Ms. Mitchell’s closing comments about “the system” fall right back into the mindset that people have no choices or cannot be motivated by things that are implicitly important to them. Implicitly important to the mother in the story was her desire not to work, and whatever system she’s on is feeding it. At the worst, Mayor Bloomberg’s system will probably be indifferent in its effects, since if people are “getting by” on welfare they will not be inclined to get off their butts for a couple thousand more. At best, it might actually give some struggling families a leg up. Regardless, the contradictions inherent in Ms. Mitchell’s own mindset are the contradictions inherent in welfare systems nationwide. Returning to a right understanding about human nature and the factors that work to influence and incentivize it, rather than blaming a system that, surprisingly enough, works perfectly well for a vast majority in this country, is the only way we will stop “throwing money” and throw out the most insidiously enabling aspects of the welfare system instead.

Allah characterized Bollinger’s description of Ahmadinejad as a “petty and cruel dictator” as the “money line.” It’s not. I am frankly stunned at the words President Bollinger used: deplore, no implication of “weakness of resolve to resist those ideas” or “naivete about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas,” dishonorable, no “rights of the speaker” but only “our rights to listen and speak,” “know thine enemies,” “mind of evil,” brutal, targets of persecution, intolerable, dangerous propaganda, ridiculous, “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” absurd, “defy historical truth,” state sponsor of terror, fanatical mindset. A very clear, forceful summation of Iran’s offenses that I couldn’t believe he would have given, to Ahmadinejad’s face, until I watched it myself, but Xrlq’s right: It was both barrels.

I disagree with Allah’s characterization of Bollinger’s speech as a Colbert maneuver. Colbert could count on nothing but support from his audience at the press dinner. It was a peacock move that succeeded about as well as anybody would who attempted to go so far outside his own milieu. I think it’s far from clear that Bollinger thought he could count on the same support, and as the cheers as Ahmadinejad begins to speak make clear, he certainly did not have undivided support even in the room. Pity the poor little teenagers, so full of their own education and confident in their years numbering more or less twenty, resenting being told how to judge Ahmadinejad more than the crimes of the Iranian government on people just like them in Iran.

As for Ahmadinejad, could he possibly have had any idea of this at the time he accepted the invitation to speak?

The Udinks of Oregon, father, mother, and son, have had their three license plates, Udink1, Udink2, and Udink3, invalidated by the state for being “offensive.”

I had to check my calender to make sure it wasn’t April 1.

“DINK has several derogatory meanings,” wrote panel member Yvonne Bell. She said it also can be a racial slur, especially toward Vietnamese.

House said the “U” in the front could be construed as “You.” It seems unreal to Mike Udink, whose name is Dutch. He says it is a common name in The Netherlands.

I think we used to call people “dinks” when I was in junior high. I always assumed it had some vague connection to “dork,” which I’ve also read has a vulgar sexual connotation. Did you guys know that when you were calling people “dorks” in high school? Because I never got the impression we knew or cared, it was just an acceptable non-cussword to call people. Wikipedia. Urban Dictionary. While the Wiki doesn’t mention the sexual slang, even the UD has many more connotations other than that. So based on the complaint of some dirty-minded concerned citizens, a family has their surname branded as “offensive” and loses the fun of having personalized license plates. Which is the state’s right, certainly, but doesn’t make it any less silly:

House said the state has the right to censor license plates, because the state owns them. Family names, it appears, are not immune.

“When people drive down the street nobody knows your name,” House said.

“We know some people have names that match something. We’ve also had a lot of references to ecstasy that we’ve pulled back in the past five years, because it became a nickname for a drug,” he said.

Implies they have “a lot” of people whose names either “match” or suggest the word “ecstasy,” doesn’t it? A search of three different forms of that word on Yahoo! people search turned up no people in Oregon.

Questionable action. Dumb justification. Welcome to Oregon.

Telemarketer: “Hi, my name is [X] with DHM. We’re doing a public-opinion survey about the future of Portland. May I please speak with a male in the household between the ages of 18 and 35?”

Me: “No.”

It was actually kind of a shame, though, because I was curious what angle they were going to be flogging about the “future of Portland.”

Bumper sticker seen this morning: that quote of Gandhi’s that says (unsourced at the Wiki), “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Bumper sticker seen about two minutes afterward: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Guess who said it?

But Gandhi wasn’t the first to repudiate “an eye for an eye.” Wait, if I think hard, I might get it.

Right, okay, Gandhi already stipulated that he admired Christ; it was his followers he had trouble with. Well, tell me something: Why is it that the people in our country today most strident against any form of religion even in public view, much less in the government, are some of the very people most strident in their demands for our government to act as Jesus said it would be best for individuals to act in their daily lives? You cannot remain an effective government if you allow individuals to tyrannize over other individuals, nor other governments to tyrannize over your own. Or, in select cases, over still other governments. It is simply not a feasible plan for the ordering of the globe.

Why are the biggest anti-religionists also frequently the biggest fans of complete nonviolence, no matter the harm it causes to people in either their own country or others?

Update: More tales of taking Jesus out of context:

Q: Is it morally meaningful for people who have no guilt to apologize to people who are not victims?”

A: No.

Just a light fisking, a little one, for Megan McArdle, for whom magic must depend on scarcity to make sense, and that therefore the Harry Potter series is not as well thought-through as it ought to be. (Via Ace, via PetiteDov.)

There will be **SPOILERS** for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows below the jump. (more…)